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Discera Raises $17.5 Million in Funding
Jim Jones Joins Discera's Board of Directors
as Company Arms to Capture $3.5B Market
Monday, March 26, 2007
SAN JOSE, Calif. - March 26, 2007 - Discera, Inc., the leader in
MEMS based oscillators, announced today the completion of a $17.5
million Series C round of funding led by Scale Venture Partners.
Discera, which recently began shipping its first products for direct
replacement of quartz crystal oscillators for timing components
in electronics devices, will use the funding to support increased
production, distribution and marketing. Scale Venture Partners joins
previous investors 3i, Partech International and Ardesta LLC. New
investor Horizon Ventures also participated in the round.
The company also announced that Jim Jones, Managing Director with
ScaleVP, has joined Discera's board of directors. Jones focuses
on emerging semiconductor and MEMS component companies and enterprise
systems.
Investors are excited about Discera because quartz crystal is considered
to be one of the final hurdles of Moore's law of scalability. In
use for over 50 years for timing applications, quartz oscillators
have reached their limit in scalability, cost and manufacturing
technology and the electronics industry has long awaited a reliable,
scalable, cost-effective alternative. The traditional crystal timing
market is estimated to be well over a $3.5 billion market.
"ScaleVP has invested in multiple MEMS companies during the last
few years due to the market acceptance of this breakthrough technology,"
said Jim Jones. "Discera is at an exciting point, as it has now
proven that silicon can replace quartz in the timing market. Given
the size of the market, Discera's leadership in commercializing
silicon resonators, the partners that Discera has signed on, and
the proven track record of the management team, the company has
the ability to become truly disruptive in the semiconductor market."
Discera recently began shipping its MOS1 oscillator successfully
after passing stringent reliability tests, with volume production
starting in 2Q07. Discera's technology consists of a silicon MEMS
resonator and an ASIC embedded within a conventional QFN plastic
package or ceramic package. Discera is offering the product directly
through a worldwide set of channel partners and through industry
leaders such as Vectron International.
"This round is a validation of Discera, our position in the market
and the maturity of our products," said Tom Willey, President and
CEO, Discera. "With this funding and the product and channel ready,
Discera can rapidly capture market share and build a fast growing
business in the timing market."
Discera has been successfully sampling its product since last year.
This past November, Discera demonstrated its technology as a plug-and-play
direct replacement of quartz crystal in a camcorder device -- the
first MEMS demonstration in a consumer device. Key target applications
for MEMS-based timing devices are PCs, DVD players, gaming consoles,
set top boxes, camcorders, PDAs and cameras as well a variety of
industrial products. For more information please contact Discera
or visit www.discera.com.
About Discera
Discera is a fabless analog semiconductor company that offers tiny,
high performance silicon resonators for the frequency and timing
control markets. These resonators act as the heartbeat or pulse
for a variety of devices from consumer products such as cameras
and MP3 players to specialized equipment for the military. The company's
PureSilicon™ resonator technology is a fundamental building block
that offers, according to Semico Research, "a better mousetrap"
for creating fully integrated, low cost, small form factor wireline
and wireless products, such as oscillators, filters, and RF components.
Unlike crystal based oscillators, Discera's PureSilicon™ based CMOS
oscillators can be integrated into other CMOS based circuits. Founded
in 2001 and headquartered in San Jose, California, Discera is a
privately held company with investments from Ardesta, Partech, 3i,
and Qualcomm Ventures. More information is available at www.discera.com.
About Scale Venture Partners
Scale Venture Partners employs a thesis-based strategy to identify
innovative development-stage technology and healthcare investments.
The ScaleVP team helps technology and healthcare companies accelerate
their growth and become more valuable to entrepreneurs, investors
and consumers. Based in Foster City, California, the ScaleVP team
collectively offers decades of technology and venture industry experience
to development-stage companies in hardware, software, healthcare
and medical devices. Representative portfolio companies include
Alimera, Frontbridge, Glu Mobile, Good Technology, Monolithic Power
Systems, Omniture, Orexigen, Placeware, ScanSafe, Seattle Genetics,
Somaxon, Wayport and Xceive. For more information, please visit
www.scalevp.com.
About Horizon Ventures
Horizon Ventures is a Los Altos, CA based venture capital partnership
with $165M under management. They invest in data and telecom systems,
wireless networks, enterprise and technical application software,
Internet tools and infrastructure, and semiconductors. Their current
portfolio includes iWatt, Inc., NuCore Technology, Advanced Microstructures,
and Chelsio Communications. For more information, visit www.horizonvc.com.
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